The Gods Are Not Kind
by Ellen910
Summary: A newcomer to Nirn, sent by the gods for purposes as yet unknown, struggles to navigate Skyrim as a would-be diplomat with no prior knowledge of the history or languages of Tamriel.  Disclaimer: The world and all NPCs belong to Bethesda.
1. Deus Ex Machina

"The Gods Are Not Kind"

Chapter 1: "Deus Ex Machina"

Even as full consciousness yet eluded her, she began to ponder the necessary questions. _Who am I_…_this time?_ Human. A _poor _human. That much was clear from what she could see of herself through slitted eyes. Hers was a skinny, underfed body, but not proportioned quite right for an elf's. Pale hands, rough from toil, were bound in front of her. Her clothes were nondescript rags – crude footbindings and something that may once have been a properly modest peasant woman's dress, but which now revealed more of her dirty body through rents and holes than her sensibilities would have preferred.

Pain intruded into her thoughts, her head throbbing with every jolt of the carriage. _Carriage! That's a partial answer to the next question: where am I? _The air on her skin was cool, almost cold, yet the light that crept through her still half-closed eyes told her it was daytime. _It's winter, then…or perhaps this is just a cold region of a cold world. _She winced internally at the drilling at the back of her head, knowing that there was a lump there, though her bound hands were not free to reach back to check. _And I'm a prisoner, going somewhere against my will_, she thought with some dismay, wondering what kind of past her captors presumed of her.

The third and most important question, _Why am I here_, would demand intense research and careful thought before she acted. It always did. And from the sounds of the meaningless gabble around her, some language lessons were in order first. She finally sat up and opened her eyes fully, looking around at her fellow "passengers." There were three men with her, their hands bound like hers. The impressive-looking gent sitting to her right was also gagged, his piercing eyes glaring out into space. Across from him was a wormy, worried little man who kept shooting nervous glares at his companions and at the guards driving the carriage. The man sitting across from her, a burly, long-haired blond in a blue-cloth and leather uniform, said something in a rough but kind voice. She shook her head, indicating that she could not understand, and regretted it at once as the resulting pain made her feel nauseous. He said something else, but she just smiled gently and remained silent. No, his language was not familiar to her. She did not even recognize any cognates or sound-patterns from the dozens of languages she spoke, read, and wrote fluently. She sighed. _The gods __couldn't__ have made this easy, could they have?_ She smiled and turned away from him, studying the forested terrain around them and noting, with some apprehension, that the train of carriages of which they were part was approaching a walled fort.

_It's never too soon to start learning_, she thought, and began to listen intently to the conversation between the blond man and the little man, noting the guttural character of the sounds and the ways in which inflection seemed to be affected by emotion and purpose. Eavesdropping was no substitute for directed language instruction, but it would facilitate that later goal somewhat. Meanwhile, their carriage trundled into the fort, where a few men, women, and children recognized their arrival by retreating into their shabby homes; by the time they had pulled to a halt, there was not a citizen to be seen.

A fierce female officer stood in the courtyard, surrounded by soldiers, barking out orders. Her male subordinate, wielding a quill and tablet, began uttering strings of syllables which she could only assume were names, as the others in the carriage slowly descended to the ground and marched over to where the officer pointed. Just as the subordinate (she at once decided to call him "Dave," since he reminded her of someone she once knew) looked at her and was about to say something – her name? It'd be nice to have a name! – the worried little man whose name had sounded like "lokiruvroriksted" screamed something and made a mad break for the exit. _Ah_, she mused, a little sadly, _this can't end well for him_. Sure enough, the archers brought him down before he was halfway to freedom. _If they'll kill him without even attempting to recapture him, what are they about to do to the rest of us? _This was getting serious. It was time to try to talk her way of this situation – a difficult task for a stranger in a strange land.

"Dave" looked troubled at _lokiruvroriksted_'s abrupt execution, but turned back to her and said something. She smiled, trying very hard to look innocent and confused, and said _I'm sorry, I don't understand you._ This she said in the Elven language of Middle Earth, not because she expected him to understand it, but because it was the most beautiful and musical language she knew and thought it might make her sound disarming. He looked surprised, then tapped his chestplate and said _Hadvar_. He did it again, but he didn't have to. She was experienced with negotiations performed in spite of a language barrier, and knew "Hadvar" to be his name. She repeated it back, then tapped her own breastbone and said "Ellen" – for no better reason than that she'd decided in her last lifetime that she wanted to be an Ellen next time she had a choice – and smiled pleadingly at him, letting a little of the fear she felt show. Hadvar said something else to her, in another, rougher language (_probably the only other one he knows, she thought with an air of superiority_), and without waiting for a response turned to his superior and said something questioningly. She responded sharply and gestured roughly for Ellen to join the other prisoners. Hadvar said something kind as she walked over there, but she barely heard him, as her mind was buzzing with fear and possibilities.

_I could run_. _I'm faster and smarter than that other idiot. _The chance of surviving with such a plan wasn't good, but might be better than certain alternatives. _I could… _– here she almost giggled, the idea was ridiculous – _I could rush that officer, snatch that dagger from her belt, and take her hostage. Or, I could wait and see what happens. _The sight of an executioner and a bloody block did not recommend this last, but still she waited, looking for the perfect moment, working meanwhile at freeing her hands from her bonds. A cloaked figure – probably a priest – began to address the prisoners, men and women whom, she noted, were all dressed in the same blue and leather uniform – all except her, anyway. _Surely someone could have recognized that I'm not with them? _she thought with a sudden surge of anger at the clumsiness of bureaucracy and especially at the female officer. Her hands were now completely free, but she feigned otherwise, keeping them clasped in front of her.

As the first of the blue-cloaked soldiers was made to kneel at the block, she was thinking hard. _Surely the gods wouldn't send me to die? Surely…there is some salvation coming?_ The sound of the ax slicing through bone and flesh broke into her thoughts and she decided that she would make her move while the next victim was being dealt with. Then, with an unpleasant jolt of surprise, she realized that the hated officer was pointing at _her_. _No time for _deus ex machina_; the gods help those who help themselves_. The soldier behind her prodded her, none too gently, with the butt of his spear, and she allowed herself to fall to the ground, feigning weakness. When he stooped to haul her up, she used his vulnerable position to pull him down, laying him out on his back with a perfectly executed throw. Sprinting over and rolling between two stunned soldiers, she lifted the officer's dagger from her belt and with the same motion held it against her neck, growling an unintelligible but clear warning for the whole courtyard to hear, and using the woman as a human shield.

A swift-thinking young soldier on the other side of the courtyard almost brought the drama to a sudden and inglorious close, lifting his crossbow and firing over his commanding officer's right shoulder and into Ellen's. She yelped, but held on, and allowed the sharp dagger to scratch her captive's throat, drawing blood. The officer yelled an order and the soldiers lowered their weapons and stood uncertainly around. Trying to ignore the pain of the bolt in her shoulder and the blood staining her rags, Ellen began to retreat, dragging her struggling shield with her. Before she could get anywhere near the exit, a sudden roar split the sky, fire filled her vision, and all hell broke loose.

The _deus ex machina_ had arrived.


	2. Choices

Chapter 2: "Choices"

_Ouch_. With all that armor, the now-deceased officer was _heavy_. When the dragon (_travelogue update: this world has dragons!_) made its awesome and fiery landing, Ellen had thrown herself backwards, pulling the officer down upon her as a shield against its breath. It had mostly worked – the bigger woman's armor and mass had effectively absorbed the worst of the flames (unfortunately for her) – although a few flames had curled around to singe her unprotected skin. Painfully aware both of her burns and her wounded shoulder, she pushed the burned corpse off of her and rolled to a crouching position, looking around her.

The courtyard had become a scene of chaos. The dragon continued to dive-bomb the few buildings not already alight, and tore viciously into every person it saw. Through a haze of smoke, Ellen saw the big blond prisoner standing free, shouting and gesturing with frantic impatience at her. Before she could pull herself together enough to respond, he ran over and grabbed her by her uninjured shoulder, dragging her bodily into a nearby tower.

Once inside, mercifully cut off from the smoke and the constant screams, Ellen leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and took a second to subliminate the panic, nausea, and pain she was feeling. This was not a time for physical weakness: only clear-minded responses to unfolding events would allow her to survive this. She was (or had been) a soldier and even a general at certain times in her long past; she was disciplined enough to force herself onward, at least until there arose a chance to rest and lick her wounds. She opened her eyes and took in her surroundings with new clarity and resolve.

She saw the formerly gagged prisoner looking at her in a shrewd and calculating manner. She met his gaze coolly, turning away after a second to examine the interior of the tower. A few of the dragon's victims lay moaning on the floor. Accustomed to the horror of battle, she could see at once that they had little chance of survival, even had there not been a dragon battering down the door. There being no time for pity, she walked over and joined the blond prisoner at the foot of a stone staircase and gestured toward the steps in an interrogative manner. He nodded, and the two of them began cautiously to ascend.

They hadn't gotten far before the wall of the tower imploded, showering them with fragments of stone and mortar: a current of flame followed this intrusion, and for the first time Ellen caught a glimpse of the dark, reptilian face. It had spoken, she was sure of it. It was not merely a growl or a roar that had preceded its fire, but a word or a series of words. _Perhaps it's is a language intimately bound up not only with epistemology, with knowing, but also with reality? Most systems of magic depend upon such an interrelationship; one just doesn't expect powerfully enactive speech from a beast. _Even presuming he could have understood or appreciated them, her companion had no patience for her philosophical meanderings: she had only a minute to consider these implications before he jerked her backwards and made her hide behind a still-intact portion of the wall.

When the dragon had turned aside in search of more buildings to smash and more accessible prey, the blond man peered out of the tower's new, gaping "window." He pointed to the roof of an adjacent dwelling, one perhaps ten feet down and five feet over, and said something, accompanying the words and the gesture with an awkward hop. Ellen was uncertain. The fall would hurt, even if she managed to land it exactly right. The blond gestured again, more urgently, looking around as he did for the return of the dragon. _It's now or never, _Ellen thought. She took a deep breath, tested her legs, and took a running leap into space.

Fortunately, she _did_ manage to hit the part of the roof she'd been aiming for: a relatively level and cushioned portion of thatch. Unfortunately, at the fiery instance of the dragon the building had already lost a portion of its structural integrity and the thatch was charred. Ellen went through the roof, adding an additional six feet to her fall, and made a bad landing on the wooden floor that left her stunned for a moment. No bones broken, as far as she could tell, but the pain throughout her body was getting bad. She couldn't much more of this constant beating. Struggling to her feet, she saw that she was on the second floor of what had, until recently, been a prosperous little inn. The burning stairs (she feared to trust her weight to them, but they were the only exit) led to a ground floor that was almost completely gutted. She crept out into the courtyard, looking for her blond savior. Instead, she saw the soldier, Hadvar, who'd been kind to her shouting orders to soldiers and civilians alike, directing them to safety. He saw her and shouted her name (along with something else – probably along the lines of "Come here, damn you!"), motioning for her to follow. He stayed low, hugging the wall for protection, and she did the same. He led her to a portion of the fort that seemed less chaotic; the main building remained untouched by the dragon's rampage and there appeared to be two entrances.

Hadvar ran toward one of these entrances, only to pull up short at the sight of the blond prisoner standing armed before the other entrance. The men exchanged harsh and hurried words, and both beckoned for her to follow them into the citadel before disappearing into their nearest door.

Ellen sighed, thinking as quickly as her befuddled senses would allow. _I didn't want to have to choose a side so quickly. I have no idea what's going on here, or what respective causes these men represent. Both seem like good men and both have helped me._ _Both are caught up in forces beyond their control – but for their differences in allegiances, they might have been neighbors or brothers. However – the soldier belongs to an army that just tried to kill me. To him I am a criminal who took his commanding officer hostage just before she died. For now, I will follow my brother in binds and trust in the rationality of his decisions. _Matching the action to the thought, she followed the blond into the keep.

_Must learn his name,_ she mused. _He can't be "the blond" forever._


	3. No Rest for the Weary

Chapter 3: No Rest for the Weary

She entered what appeared to be the soldiers' quarters of the keep to find her new friend rummaging through a chest that stood at the foot of one of the beds, making a pile of the armor he found therein. Hearing her footsteps behind him, he turned toward her with a smile, indicating that she should put them on. She hesitated, then shook her head, indicating the bolt still lodged in the flesh of her right shoulder, and mimed pulling it out. _I can't put any kind of breastplate on while it's still in there,_ she thought. _It'll be debilitatingly painful if the armor takes any kind of frontal hit. Better to remove it and bind it up for the time being. Surely he can see that. _Sure enough, he hesitated a second, then nodded, grabbing some linen wraps, a candle, and a bottle of wine while inviting her to sit on one of the beds.

She sat down and watched him, thankful that he was willing to spare her a moment in the midst of his escape. When he approached her, she smiled and "introduced" herself as she had before. He was not quite so clever as the soldier had been, and only stared until she had repeated herself twice: "Ellen. _Ellen_." Finally catching on, he responded in kind: "Ralof." She smiled and nodded, then handed him the dagger she'd stolen from the dead officer (which she'd somehow managed to retain throughout the dragon's attack), and motioned for him to cut away the rags pinned to her flesh.

She grimaced as the blood-matted cloth came away, exposing the wound around the black dart. This next part would hurt, but it needed to be done. She preferred to do this part of the field dressing herself. Taking the dagger back from him, she held it in the candle's flame for a moment, let it cool a moment, then used the blackened tip to widen the wound slightly, hopefully in such a way that the barbed bolt would not tear too much on exit – or worse, the head break off still inside. She was used to the pain and the process by now, having done similar operations hundreds of times on dozens of battlefields, both on her own wounds and upon those of her comrades.

Having finished this messy chore, she waved impatiently (and with some concern, as the rags on the right side of her body were by now quite stained with blood) for Ralof to do the last part. She could have done it with her left hand, but the angle was bad, and in any case a firm, straight pull by another person was always more expedient. This he did with admirable swiftness, then doused it with wine, and began to wrap the wound with the cloth (a mostly clean one, she hoped). She used her usual mental strategy of distancing herself from these events and focused instead upon the room they were in, the meaningless but comforting sounds of Ralof's soothing murmurings, and his obvious experience with on-the-spot treatment. Having secured the binding well, he stood up and looked at her face with concern, as if he expected her to pass out on the spot. _It's not that I wouldn't like to, Ralof, but I think I owe you all the help my conscious self can give. I wish I could speak to you, to assure you that you haven't wasted your time with me._

Standing with only a momentary touch of dizziness, Ellen began to strap on the various pieces of armor. It wasn't much to look at – certainly she'd smithed and worn better – probably standard issue for the soldiers, a mix of leather and steel: chestplate, gauntlets, boots, and helmet. Her right arm wasn't of much help with this task, but her clumsy efforts were aided by Ralof, who made certain that everything was attached properly. Spotting a simple wooden shield under the bed, she wondered whether her right arm could carry it well enough to make it worthwhile, then changed her mind: she seriously doubted whether there was a swordsman or -woman within ten miles that could take her in a fight – even as exhausted as she was and with her dominant hand out of action. She didn't like the heavy iron sword Ralof handed her and would have preferred to rely solely upon her considerable skill at unarmed combat, but for the fact that this apparent show of bravado would probably worry her companion unduly.

She needn't have worried. They met their first opponents a little way into the keep – two frightened soldiers – each of whom they dispatched with ease, Ralof with what she saw as uncessarily lethal force, and she with a subtle trip that sent the poor man sprawling and a sword pommel to the forehead that left him unfit and undesirous for further combat. There was a bit of a scene in the next chamber, a room that could only have been designed for forceful "interrogation." Here she witnessed for the first time a possible explanation for Ralof's fury and she herself felt great anger and disgust for the actions of the torturer and his assistance against their prisoners. _Soon I will learn why this land is full of blood, fear, and anger; soon I will begin the work of resolution – whatever that looks like here. _She added grimly, remembering certain previous missions: _Hopefully, I won't have to kill a thousand men to do it._

Their most difficult battle lay in the room just beyond this, as several archers and swordsmen set upon them at their entrance. Luckily, her shoddy armor protected her from their accurate shots (of which there were not many), and Ralof too emerged unhurt. Between them, they left five dead and one badly wounded in this room. Having delivered the non-fatal blow to this last, Ellen wondered if she oughtn't just to kill him rather than leave him to suffer – it was not likely that he would receive help as most of his fellows were dead and the fort was in shambles. She decided against it, as Ralof was already moving on into the corridor, but she looked back with some pity at the soldier before hustling to catch up.

The adrenaline of battle can only carry a person so far beyond their natural limits, and Ellen knew she was nearing the end of that artificial energy. She struggled to keep pace with Ralof as they traveled deeper and deeper underneath the keep, barely aware of her surroundings in the weary struggle of putting one foot in front of the other. Around one turn, she was only mildly surprised to see giant spiders and barely managed to raise her sword before Ralof had gotten rid of them all. He maneuvered her around a sleeping bear that she probably would have tripped on in her current state, and she could only stumble on, her head drooping.

At last they saw the end of the tunnel, illuminated by the cold light of a late winter's afternoon. They had barely emerged before Ralof pulled her behind a bush and pointed silently to the flying departure of the black dragon. She looked – or tried to – and was surprised to find that there were actually a thousand tiny black dragons (mere specks, they were up so high!) fluttering over the sky, which was become rapidly dimmer as her knees gave out and she fell backwards, still gazing upward. _Travelogue note: Night comes very quickly here,_ she thought, aware in a more detached part of her mind that it was only her own semi-conscious state that made it appear that way. Her last thought before blackness swallowed her was: _I hope Ralof doesn't mind carrying me._


	4. Happy Birthday to Me

Chapter 4: "Happy Birthday to Me"

When Ellen awoke, it was nighttime and she was indoors, apparently in a simple, one-room house, no longer aware of any particular pain or discomfort except for hunger and thirst. Beyond the minor aches that she would have expected from the rough-and-tumble exertions of their escape, only the shoulder still ached – someone had been kind enough to rebind it with meticulous care, but she suspected it would some weeks before it would be good for anything much. Her benefactor (_Ralof?_) had made up a bed for on the floor near the cottage's fire, which had burned down to mere coals. It was the middle of the night and the dwelling was silent and dark, its inhabitants resting, the sounds of their heavy breathing testifying to their unseen presence; while she did not wish to wake anyone, she was not sure if she could fall back asleep without a sip of water.

Pushing back the cover (a bearskin) with her good arm, she pushed herself slowly and cautiously to her feet, not wanting to pass out again and give her poor head another crack. She felt surprisingly steady on her feet and almost totally whole, and wondered suddenly how long she'd been asleep; her body felt more healed than a few hours would have allowed. Someone – _hopefully not Ralof_, she thought with some embarrassment – had removed her rags and dressed her in a long-sleeved garment of rough wool that came almost all the way down to her bare feet. Shuffling softly over to a roughly-hewn table that stood near the fireplace, she found a pitcher half full of cool water and poured some of it into what she hoped was a clean cup. Somewhat revived, she refilled it and set it down next to her pillow (a rolled-up sheepskin) and lay back down. Knowing that she was safe and well-looked after, she allowed sleep to claim her without reservation.

When Ellen awoke again, the sun had not yet risen, but the pale light of early morning could be seen through the cottage's one small window. After rolling over and making her "bed" and quenching her thirst with the cup of water, she began to do some basic floor stretches, desined to test the condition of this body (which was not really hers, not yet) and to acclimate Ellen herself to its future possibilities and current limitations. Although the long nightgown was somewhat encumbering, it felt good to step through the first part of her usual morning routine.

She – or rather, this body she had recently received – was reasonable healthy, she was happy to find. The gods seldom gave her the challenge of a disability, though she had once gone through a life as a blind mage, and another time had spent the last thirty years of her life with only one arm (these had been some of the happiest years she had ever known, actually, her injury having forced her into a peaceful retirement). She was too thin and unsurprisingly lacked muscle tone. The various acrobatics she had forced herself to perform back in the fort had relied both upon her mind's recollection of many years of training and experience and upon the adrenaline that the circumstances had created. These tools – knowledge and the psychology discipline to make an energetic effort when necessary – were no substitute for sustained physical conditioning. Based on the shape and proportions of her limbs, she guessed that she was only a few years beyond puberty – perhaps seventeen. In a fit of whimsy, and sudden good humor, Ellen arbitrarily decided that the day of the escape would be hereafter her birthday, providing she survived at least a year here and eventually figured out the calendric system of this world.

"Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…" she sang softly in the language of her homeland, the language that still remained, after all these years, the primary language of her thoughts, dreams, and internal discourse. Even when it would have been much easier to allow this internal language to change many times throughout the years, she had held onto this it for the same reasons that she had held onto the tune of "Happy Birthday" – to remember where she had come from and where (_gods have mercy!_) she would one day return. They had never told her how long she would have to serve throughout the many worlds, how many friends she would lose, how many times she would have to _die_ (sometimes as an aged woman, but more often by violence), before she could rest. _Someday_, they said. _Until then, you are an agent of stability, peace-keeping, sanity, and above all __**purpose**__. We all must serve Purpose, lest the agents of chaos should prevail._ The gods as she understood them and related to them (despite all their different faces and names, they remained the same from world to world) were not as wise and powerful as they would have liked mortals to believe; they were, in fact, subordinate themselves to a higher power: they also answered to Someone, though she had never spoken directly with this Someone, and in her darker moods even doubted its existence. _The room at the top of the Tower is empty_…or at least it might as well be sometimes, she thought with sudden bitterness. _Who said that? Some pessimistic poet or aging king, no doubt_. Scraps from her past occasionally came to her mind like this; it had long become too hard to keep the details straight.

"Enough," she said softly to herself, shaking her head to clear this black mood which had come to fall upon her more and more often of late. "I have a job to do. To do this job, I first need to train this body, educate myself in language, culture, history, and etiquette, and so gradually increase my status in this land." Finishing her stretching routine and getting to her feet, she began to do a series of convalescence exercises adapted to exclude her right arm – smooth, very slow motions designed to improve balance, reduce stress, and gradually ease the traumatized body back into fighting shape. She further adapted the routine so that she could do them standing in one place – the cottage was not that big, and she did not want to go outside less her gracious hosts awake and find her gone. Ellens had done these routines a thousand times before in the process of recovering from all matter of things, unwilling to remain in bed a second too long; her first training master had instructed her in the method, and she had always been grateful for the therapeutic power of the exercises.

Ellen closed her eyes and continued the movements, letting her mind drift along peaceful paths. Deciding after a few minutes that that was enough for a beginning, she returned to a neutral stance, brought her hands together in front of her, and opened her eyes. She was a little dismayed and self-conscious to find a man, woman, and boy staring at her from across the room. _How long have they been watching? _Not knowing what else to do, she bowed formally to each of them and introduced herself in the simplest, one-word manner. She paused a moment, to allow them a chance to speak, but they just stood there, apparently still trying to catch up to the fact that their previously comatose patient was awake and moving her limbs in an odd fashion; to break the silence, she said the only word she knew that could be meaningful to them: "Ralof?"

The word brought the woman, at least, to life and she shook her head, saying something utterly incomprehensible to Ellen and pointing at the same time to the door, presumably to indicate what was obvious: Ralof was not there. Not having any other way of reading the situation, Ellen looked closely at the woman's face and saw there a family resemblance to her friend. _She's probably his sister. For all I know, he's a war criminal and has had to make himself scarce._ She nodded as if she understood, then introduced herself once more, before pointing to the woman.

She responded with "Gerdur," then turned to the task of making breakfast, still keeping a nervous eye on her guest.

The menfolk seemed a little more comfortable, inviting her to sit with them at the table, and attempting gamely to communicate with her, seemingly undaunted by her repeated looks of confusion when they tried simple, slow sentences. The man, it turned out, was Hod, and Frodnar was their son. The boy was especially unafraid of her, and asked many intricate questions, all of which were met with a smile and a shake of the head.

Thinking of something, she smiled, pointed to herself once more – "Ellen" – then pointed to a chicken's egg that lay on a plate upon the table and made a questioning noise. He caught on at once, grinned and gave her the word. They played this game together until Gerdur set their food before them, by which time Ellen had learned the words for not only "egg" but "plate," "bread" (or "slice of bread," she reminded herself – language acquisition was a tricky business, full of initial misconceptions), "cup," "garlic," and a certain funny-looking cheese (the word was possibly not applicable to other kinds of cheese). She presumed the child was giving her these nouns in the nominative, but had to admit the possibility that the lexical form of nouns in this language was _not_ the nominative, but perhaps a different part of speech, or a form not attested in written or spoken sentence structure. Not likely, but possible. She continued to ask him (as well as his parents) as they ate, trying to learn such important verbs as "to drink" and "to eat." The parents played along, but not with the same level of enthusiasm or helpfulness as Frodnar. Long experience had taught Ellen that children were often better language-teachers than adults – they were closer to the early language-learning stage of childhood than their elders, and could better understand her situation. They were also much more patient with the repetitive nature of this "game" and were not abashed about laughing at her fumbling attempts to pronounce new words.

After breakfast, Frodnar bounded to the door, eagerly beckoned for her to follow, and disappeared. Willing to explore, but not wishing to appear rude to her hosts (or to appear in a nightgown to whoever might be outside), she glanced searchingly at her host and hostess. Gerdur beckoned her over to a large chest in the corner and drew out a simple set of clothing – a patched but clean tunic and pants, along with a pair of well-used boots about her size. Hod stepped outside to allow her privacy and she began to dress; before Ellen had a chance to pull the tunic over her head, Gerdur took a moment to examine her shoulder, seemed satisfied with what she saw there, and did not move to change the bandages. The older woman patted her gently on the back, then directed her out the door with a warm smile and a wave, her previous nervousness apparently alleviated.

Ellen smiled in return, bowed once more, then went in search of Frodnar and a better understanding of her new home.


	5. Home is Where the Heart Is

Chapter 5: "Home is Where the Heart Is"

"Stumf."

"Stum_p_!"

"Stumpf." Based on Frodnar's frustrated look, Ellen suspected that he was beginning to think of her as a bit slow. She doubted that he'd ever met a foreigner before; the kid had probably never been more than a few miles from this tiny hamlet in his life. Biting back the useless temptation to bluster about the difficulty of getting the sounds exactly right the first try, she tried again: "Stum-pah. Stump."

Finally satisfied with her pronunciation, the boy nodded happily, patting the rangy mutt by his side as he did so. Ellen was seized with a sudden misgiving. _Ah, the hazards of language acquisition_. Seeing another mutt across the street, she decided to test her knowledge by pointing and inquiring "Stump?"

He looked at her as if she was crazy, then laughed in sudden awareness of the joke, shook his head, and gave her the generic noun "dog." Hoping to pick up a linking verb, Ellen played the fool and responded with comical confusion "Stump? Dog?"

Frodnar gave an exaggerated sigh, and in a tone of such solemn patience that its subtext was an obvious _You're an idiot_, said, "Stump…is…a…dog."

Ellen repeated these sounds, then echoed the sentence in reverse, trying to pin down the different parts of speech: "Dog is a Stump?"

"No, no, no" – at least that seemed a safe guess at the sounds that accompanied the vigorous shaking of Frodnar's head – "Stump is a dog." A little more hesitantly, perhaps catching on to what his stupid pupil hoped to learn: "A dog…is Stump." He scowled, shook his head more emphatically still, and said, "No. Stump is a dog."

Ellen laughed and let it go, mentally storing the information for later sorting out. She and Frodnar walked up and down "Main Street" – such as it was – a couple of times, with him teaching her several new nouns and a couple of verbs: Ground (or maybe dirt), rock, cow, thistle, woman, man, and river…walk and talk. People going about their business looked at her and her young companion a little oddly, but with no air of fear or suspicion. _Clearly, the trouble I saw back at the fort hasn't deeply affected innocence of this little burg yet_, she thought.A little sadly, _But it will, given time._

When Frodnar stopped to catch frogs by a calm inlet of the river (kindly adding the amphibian's name to his companion's repertoire), Ellen took advantage of the still water to look at her features. It was always disorienting to see a stranger's face in reflection – in this case a very young-looking teenage girl, serious brown eyes set in a thin, angular face with high cheekbones, her short, dirty-blond hair cut incredibly badly, as if somewhat had tried to shear her head with a knife. Ellen felt pity for this face she had somehow inherited, even though the girl's history and origins were an irrelevant mystery to her. She had never asked where the gods picked up her hosts and no one in any of her travels had ever recognized her features as belonging to anyone else. Although she had no proof of this, she had always suspected that the gods created her bodies from whole cloth, adding a freckle here and an imperfection there to make them appear more realistic. It didn't really matter. _Whoever they were before – if they were anybody before – by the time I'm through with them, they are thoroughly mine. My gestures, my look, my scars, my strength, my aches and pains. They give me a body and in return I give them a weapon, a tool, and eventually…a life._ She looked critically at the hair, wondering if it wouldn't be better just to shave her head somehow and let it grow out. _Ah, vanity …that's nothing new_, she thought with a wry smile. _Some things never change._

After the frog-hunting expedition, Frodnar and she spent a lazy hour rocking on the porch of what appeared to be the town watering hole, and were eventually joined by a young girl, introduced to her as Dorthe. The children were obviously good friends and chatted back and forth to one another, oblivious to her non-comprehension. Ellen bore this for some time, then made as if to excuse herself to leave them to their conversation. When she got to her feet, however, Dorthe leapt up and grabbed her hand, pulling her down the street, toward the blacksmith's outdoor forge, where a burly man toiled tirelessly over horseshoes and hinges.

The girl said something lengthy and very fast to the blacksmith, of which Ellen only caught her own name and possibly a form of the verb "to talk." The blacksmith looked at Ellen with kindly confusion and said something in a tone of polite inquiry. On a verbal level, Ellen, of course, could only respond with deferential gibberish – although there _was_ something she wanted to ask the man. Attempting to represent the question with crude sign language, she tried:

"I" (pointing to herself) "smith" (miming bringing a hammer down on the anvil and wincing when the motion hurt her shoulder) "for" (offering an open-handed gesture toward him) – "you" (pointing to him, and inflecting this last word – in her own language – as a question). He nodded as if he understood, but pointed to her injured shoulder.

"Well, yes, obviously, not _now_…" she gave up with a sigh, smiled, and bowed. Truly she would not have minded trying the work even now – she was quite a good smith, having long taken pride in making and maintaining her own weapons and armor. But now was a time for healing and learning. She would come back to him another time, after her shoulder and active vocabulary had become more functional, to ask for work.

Dorthe looked at her expectantly and dragged her into the house adjoining the forge, Frodnar tagging along somewhat less enthusiastically. The interior was laid out much like Frodnar's house, and Dorthe's mother looked up from the hearth as the three came in. She welcomed them graciously, listened to her daughter's explanation (_gods know exactly what she's telling her mother about me_, she thought), and offered the three each a cup of milk and some bread and cheese, which Ellen accepted with nodded thanks. The girl disappeared downstairs for a moment and came up with a tattered old book. Sitting down between Frodnar and Ellen, she opened it to the first page and pointed to three columns of spiky characters and began to read: "Ah, Bah, Cah…"

Always an earnest student of the written word (preferring it to spoken language, which she usually found more difficult), Ellen was so excited to see an abecedary (as opposed to a syllabary, or – gods forbid – a logographic chart) that she almost grabbed it from the girl's hands. Noticing her excitement, Dorthe went and got her a torn piece of paper and a stick of charcoal, and Ellen used this to carefully copy out each character and its phonetic transliteration (in her own alphabet) as Dorthe pronounced it.

For the next hour, the children – with somewhat less enthusiasm than Ellen – helped her with some primary-level sentences, even letting her read aloud – haltingly and with atrocious pronunciation – a short story of which she understood very little, except that she fancied it to be a cautionary tale not unlike "Little Red Riding Hood," and which contained, as characters, both a frog and a dog.

After a while, the children excused themselves for chores, but Ellen remained seated (with the kind, though curious approval of Sigrid), fascinated with the book and delighted at this sudden windfall of knowledge. After hours of "reading" the entirety of the short book, her eyes were strained from looking at the unfamiliar characters and her mind was buzzing with words whose meanings she did not yet know, but some sense of syntax and inflection was already coming to her. Closing the book and leaving it on the table, she thanked the bemused housewife, and left the house, intending to go make herself useful to her hosts, Gerdur and Hod.

She found Hod by the river, sitting and looking wearily at a large pile of unchopped logs, his ax fixed firmly in the chopping block. At her approach, he arose and greeted her cheerily. She greeted him in kind, then put a questioning hand on the ax handle, trying to convey an offer to help. He seemed uncertain for a moment, glancing at her injury as if he wanted to say something, then backed off and invited her to try.

It wasn't easy to swing an ax one-handedly, but she managed it for a while, working through about half the pile before dark, and helping Hod to carry some of it inside for the fire. By that time, Ellen was aching from the day's exertions and knew she had probably overdone things a little. Hod tried to hand her a few coins in payment for her work and she shook her head, trying to say that she was trying to make partial repayment to them: "No…You…I to eat, I to drink, I to sleep. You house, you clothes."

"Yes," he said stubbornly. "Ralof." And with that he placed the coins on the ground in front of her and went inside. She stooped and took them, resolving to find another way of doing the family a favor. After a good meal, a quick wash at the river, and a change of bandages on her shoulder, she was thoroughly ready for sleep. Without even bothering to take off her boots, she flopped down on her pallet and was asleep in a moment.

And so Ellen's weeks in Riverwood fell into a comfortable rhythm of exercise, education, and work, as she soon learned the names and habits of everyone in the little community, helping them out with whatever she could – one day she might help fix a roof, and another day midwife a calf. She frequently helped Alvor at the forge once she was well and he had becomed convinced of her skill; she requested that he pay her for her work in materials, and set leather and steel aside to repair and improve the armor she'd taken from the keep, which Gerdur had cleaned and stored for her; she also intended to create a decent set of blades for herself, although ideally she'd have made them of better metals than Alvor's "good, honest steel and iron."

Her body grew stronger, capable of more strenuous exertion, as she trained it to perform the motions she already knew by heart – motions that would hopefully keep her alive in the dangerous world beyond this temporary haven. Joining Faendal on his hunting ventures, she refined her touch on the hunting bow he had given her, until she could have matched him arrow for arrow if they had put it to a contest. Which of course they didn't, she not wanting to hurt his delicate pride which had already been hurt by Camilla's rejection.

Not wishing to impose upon Gerdur and Hod (and needing some privacy of her own), she slept in Sven and Hilde's barn most nights and in return fed, watered, and milked their cow each morning. As she looked toward the day that she would leave Riverwood, she felt great sadness at the thought of parting from the children, especially Dorthe, who had come to look up to her a great deal. The girl was very bright and curious and Ellen hoped fervently that she would be moved to see the world beyond her village someday. She had said nothing definite of her plans for leaving to Dorthe, though they spent most evenings together, reading from a random assortment of storybooks. On one such evening near the end of her stay, Ellen resolved to herself, _A week from tomorrow it will be two full months since I awoke in Riverwood. That's when I'll leave to seek my purpose in the wide world…though I will have left a part of my heart here._

"What are you thinking about, Ellen? You look so far away."

"Nothing, Dorthe. I was just wishing that I had a home of my own."

"But you do have a home! Riverwood is your home!"

Touched almost to tears, she nevertheless smiled and shook her head. "Not forever, honey. People like me can't stay very long in quiet, happy places like this. We're needed too much in the world. Partly so that places like Riverwood can stay safe for little girls like you."

"But _I _need you. Let me come with you!"

"I'll visit you as much as I can, and bring you all kinds of books. Maybe even some spellbooks – then you can finally find out if you're a mage! Meanwhile, your Da needs his favorite apprentice and daughter."

The girl was quiet, then blurted out timidly, "Will you also bring me a glowbug in a jar? I've always wanted one, but they don't live in Riverwood."

"I'll do my best," Ellen said gravely, and the two friends, one very young and one very old, settled back into their story.


End file.
